Theodora Goss's Blog, page 76

What I think about, mostly, is the cold.  It is incredibly cold here, colder than I have ever felt.  A stinging cold, until your face goes numb.  And then you start to worry, wondering whether you still have a nose or cheeks or chin. Perhaps they have turned to ice.

I don't usually approve of wearing fur, but today I am grateful for it.

I look back at the sled, where Tilda, Emma, and Mouse are waiting. They are muffled as well, like small sasquatches in their furs. The driver looks even more like a sasquatch. He is a tall man, at least seven feet, and we have not seen his face. We have not asked to. It is not our job to ask questions, at least not this time.

The dogs are silent, lying on the snow. At least until the truck drives up, across the border. When the men get out of the truck, in their black uniforms, the dogs begin to bark furiously.

The border is only a red post, sticking out of the snow. I will not walk past it to them, they will not walk past it to me. But I am waiting on my side of the red post. Because our furs are white, the dogs are white, it is the only colored thing in this landscape.

Four men in uniforms, two to hold the prisoner, two to point the guns.

"Did you bring it?" one of them, their leader, calls to me.

I hold up the bag I am carrying, which says Duty Free Vladivostok.

"Show it to me."

I take out a metal device. Its lethality is, to those who understand such things, immediately obvious. I do not understand such things, they do not belong to my world, but I handle it gingerly.

"All right!" he says. "Put it back in the bag, put the bag by the marker, and then stand back."

"No," I say. I'm almost surprised that my mouth can still move, it's so numb. "Bring him to the marker, and as soon as he crosses, I will hand you the bag myself."

Silence, for a moment. Then, "All right."

He brings the prisoner. There are now three guns pointed at us. I see him, bland face, black uniform. And the prisoner: with his hood up and a scarf over his mouth, all I can see is a pair of green eyes. He steps over the border, I hand over the bag, and that's it. It's happened quickly, silently, with only a suspicious glance from the man in black, the barking of the dogs in the background.

And then we are walking with our backs to the guns.

"They won't shoot," he says, the man who is no longer a prisoner. "They won't shoot across the border."

"I know that," I say, as crossly as I can with a frozen mouth.

"Well, you looked worried, Thea." I glace at him. He has pulled down his scarf and is, improbably, smiling.

"Why did you put me to all this trouble? You could just have dissolved into air, or walked through the walls, or something. I mean, do you know how many days it's taken us to get here?" And how we were almost killed, twice. And how sick Mouse was, at one point. And what a complete idiot he was, to have been captured in the first place.

"But then he wouldn't have taken what was in the bag, believing it's what he wants, would he?"

I stop walking. "You mean it's not?"

"Of course not." Still smiling. I want, very badly, to hit him.

Only now do I look back. The men in black uniforms have gotten back into their truck. I can hear the engine. Our journey will be much longer, but we accomplished – something, evidently, although not what I thought. I hate not being told what I'm doing, being left out of plans. Even when they're Mother Night's plans.

"Next time, I'm not saving you," I say.  I start walking again, and he follows.

"But you haven't saved me. You've saved the world."

"What, again?" I sound bitter. But we have arrived back at the sled, and Emma is handing me a thermos, and as I drink the coffee, warm and sweet, I start to feel my face thawing. I say, "Girls, guess what we did."

Tilda says, "Again? That's got to be the third time. We should get a medal or something."

I wish I could have taken better pictures of these drawings, but of course I could not use a flash, and my digital camera is quite old. This was the best I could do.

I took them in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which I've already described (look back to my post on the museum trip). And I've been thinking about them ever since. The drawings were part of an exhibit of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century drawings, all of which were magnificent, some of which were truly unexpected. It was fascinating to see drawings by Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot. But Vincent Van Gogh? Artists draw, of course. But somehow I never expected to see a Van Gogh drawing. Here they are:

What's so magnificent about them is that they're not like drawings by anyone else.  Look at them closely to see the details.  I don't even know how he drew that tree.  It's as though it was drawn by someone who made up a new way of drawing, using those thick hatch marks.  Who draws a tree like that?  And the waterscape.  Look closely and you'll see how delicate it is, what a fine eye he had.

I feel as though these drawings should lead me to some sort of philosophical statement about art and the artist.  But the only thing they make me think of is that Van Gogh truly was unique.  Picasso made himself unique: he imitated everyone else until he figured out who he was as an artist, how to paint like no one else.  But Van Gogh simply seems to have seen the world differently.  (It reminds me of the scene in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse where Mr. Ramsey thinks about two different ways to get to R.  Some people have to go through the entire alphabet to get to R logically, while others seems to get there directly, by skipping most of the letters and simply intuiting R.)

I suppose the only philosophical statement this leads me to is that all great artists become great in different ways.  And I will admit, although it's difficult to admit, that a place like the VMFA leads me just a little to despair.  Because there is such an obvious difference between a great work and a not-so-great work, when it's hanging on the wall in front of you.  And I wonder if I will ever write something not just good, but truly great, something that people will still want to read a hundred years from now, as they want to look at Van Gogh's paintings.  (Although I also like looking at the drawings.  It is in the minor works, often, that you can learn the most about an artist.  But we look at the drawings because of the paintings, at the minor works because of the major ones.)  That way lies discontent, and so I just write.  But as I do, I think about things like Van Gogh's drawings, about how he stamps his personality so completely on even these small works.

Even in them, he can't not be Van Gogh.

Aspiring writers are often told something like the following: you need to write a story, submit it, and start working on the next story. As soon as the first story comes back, submit it somewhere else. And don't stop writing. They are essentially told that the writing cycle is "write and submit." And they are told the same sort of thing about novels as well: write one, submit it to an agent, start writing the next one. But still the cycle is "write and submit."

My writing life is nothing like that. And honesty, I'm not sure how far you can get following that advice, because the writers I know, the ones who are doing well – their writing lives are nothing like that either.

I was thinking about that today, and thought I would describe what my writing life is actually like in case it helps any of you think about what you want to do with your own writing lives. So, my writing life. Here is what I've been doing this week.

At the moment, I have three projects I'm working on. The first (by deadline) is my Folkroots column, which will be on vampires. I think it will start with the line "I don't like sparkly vampires." That's due in early January. I haven't started on it yet, but I already know which sources I'm going to use. After all, I'm teaching "Carmilla" and Dracula next semester. I really should rename my Spring course Vampires 101. The second is a story I've been asked to write for an anthology. I was having difficulty coming up with an idea for the story, but today it came to me – a completely different way of looking at the project that should be fun and interesting to write. That's due in mid-January. I have a month for both, which means I'd better get on them. Like, yesterday. And finally, I have a story I want to write – the first in a while that I haven't been asked to write. I've already mentioned it, "Elena's Egg," and even though right now it's just a mass of notes, I'm already thinking about where I might place it, because it fits on the boundary between mainstream and fantasy fiction. So while there are a number of magazines where I might send it, places I've published stories that are interested in this sort of thing, I might actually start with a mainstream literary magazine, who knows. I'll have to see how the story turns out.

Earlier this week, I proofed two interviews that I had done for Clarkesworld and Booklife. I talked to an editor about a project I had worked on some time ago, an introduction to an anthology, and made sure all the stories were lined up so the anthology could be published. I promised to write a blurb, which I will do this weekend. (Fair warning: I've been terrible about blurbs this year, because my schedule does not allow me to read books. I could only write this one because I was already familiar with the manuscript.) Also this weekend, I need to register and reserve a hotel room for ICFA. And, I almost forgot, I just received my invitation to Boskone.

Every day, I checked facebook, wrote blog posts, and posted links to my blog posts on facebook.

So, what is involved in my writing life? Writing stories, essays, introductions, and blurbs. Doing interviews. Contacting editors and other authors. Updating my website. Keeping in touch with the writing community on facebook. Preparing for conventions.

That's a lot more than "write and submit."

But the writers I know who are doing well, the ones whose names you will recognize, are all doing the same sorts of things. Some of them found magazines. Some edit anthologies. Some go on tours with singers. All of them are actively involved in the writing community, and actively forming their writing lives. All of them have multiple projects going on at one time, because they know that any one project can fail.

So when you think about your own writing life, imagine it not as a repeating cycle, but as a sort of vine that grows and branches. What sorts of things can you do? What can you reach out for, what can you propose or create that others will find interesting? Be imaginative. After all, being imaginative is (hopefully) why you became a writer in the first place.

I woke this morning from a night filled with nightmares – for the second time in two weeks.

It comes, I think, from the stresses of the past few months, which have been some of the most difficult I remember. And it's made me think about my life, about how I respond to certain situations.

The thing is, I've lived a fascinating life. I know it's fascinating, and that parts of it sound like a story. But those of us who have had lives in which things like the secret police and imprisonment for political crimes were real threats – you can't mess with us. We are extraordinarily sensitive to certain things – certain kinds of darkness. Certain things triggers a sort of post-traumatic stress response. We can't, for example, stand cruelty or coercion or silencing. Even minor examples trigger a strong reaction.

I think I have a fundamental need to believe that the world is rational, and that people are at least capable of behaving in civilized ways. Because I've seen and heard too much of the other stuff. And I have a fundamental need, myself, to feel free – to know that all the world is mine, that all possible thoughts are mine, that I can go anywhere and do anything I set my mind to.

It's a legacy, I think, of having been born behind closed borders.

The stresses of the past few months have brought some of those issues back – I think that's the reason for the nightmares. But there's a useful lesson in this for writing as well.

I think the darkest story I have ever written is "The Belt." It's a story about mental and physical imprisonment, and I could barely stand to write it. I could barely stand to read it afterward – and now I never do, although I know it's pretty mild stuff, by some people's standards.

My one serious problem with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is that there are dark, violent scenes that are written almost as set pieces, by someone who obviously enjoyed writing them, enjoyed constructing those particular scenes. I can see that, as a writer. And to me as a reader, that is genuinely disturbing. Because darkness is real, it's not a literary device or convention. (The second book in the series starts with one of those set pieces, which is one reason I won't be reading the series.  Although I probably wouldn't anyway.  I learned some interesting things about plotting from the first book, but Stieg Larsson's prose is not the sort I particularly enjoy.)  One thing I admire about the Harry Potter books is that J.K. Rowling is intensely aware of the reality of darkness. Voldemort and his Death Eaters are, strangely enough, more real than Larsson's sadists and serial killers. But then, Rowling worked for Amnesty International. She knows what she's talking about.